Diablo III: Reaper of Souls - Interview

GameReactor has a new interview with Blizzard's Josh Mosqueira, and Christian Lichtner.

Blizzard's Josh Mosqueira and Christian Lichtner talk us through the new loot system, the gothic setting, a sixth character class and more.

Fresh from announcing the expansion to Diablo III at Gamescom, game director Josh Mosqueira and art director Christian Lichtner talk to Bengt Lemne about what's new in Reaper of Souls.

Mosqueira, who recently took over as Diablo III's game director after Jay Wilson stepped away from the role, started the ball rolling. "Goal number one was to really capture and deliver on the promise that is Diablo, and that really starts with epic heroes," he explained.

"Whether you're the Crusader or the Barbarian, you're playing a bigger-than-life hero and you're fighting against the forces of darkness. For this expansion we're introducing a brand new villain - Malthael, the fallen angel of wisdom - and his legion of death angels. But at the end of the day what we thought was super important for us to get right with Reaper of Souls, was loot. We've done big changes to the loot system. We're essentially going to drop less, better and more epic loot."

Lichtner, the game's art director, then explained the other major addition coming in the expansion: a sixth character class to appear alongside the Barbarian, Demon Hunter, Wizard, Witch Doctor and Monk. "We also have a new class, which is the Crusader. So that was really exciting for us, because we love our five classes that we have right now, but we really were missing this tanky, big, armoured version of a character, and the Crusader is really the answer for us on that."

Originally Posted by kalniel
I think it's 'automatic' because D3 sold so well1 and was critically well received2, not to mention it's the style of game that suits an expansion and fans of the series would like to see one.

A user metacritic score of 3.8 isn't anything to be proud about and the disparity between 'professional' reviewers (score 88) and users (score 3.8) makes the 'professionals' look a bit dubious.

My take on why the game sold 'well' is because a lot of knuckleheads (like me, for example) ran out and bought the game based on the brand name alone only to be rudely surprised at how bad it was. I played the game a few hours and it has sat on the shelf ever since.

— If I'm right but there is no wife around to acknowledge it, am I still right?

Originally Posted by Ovenall
With this expansion, is all new content available from a brand-new game? Anyone know?

Yeah, the expansion adds one extra act of content, right after Act 4 of D3. It continues the story. And it adds 10 more levels. What this means is it will cause a redistribution of what level you get at which act. Plus extra abilities/runes for all the 5 existing classes for the 10 extra levels.

Originally Posted by TheMadGamer
A user metacritic score of 3.8 isn't anything to be proud about and the disparity between 'professional' reviewers (score 88) and users (score 3.8) makes the 'professionals' look a bit dubious.

Or the users who posted a review on metacritic were un-representative trollers Like that's never happened before

My take on why the game sold 'well' is because a lot of knuckleheads (like me, for example) ran out and bought the game based on the brand name alone only to be rudely surprised at how bad it was. I played the game a few hours and it has sat on the shelf ever since.

Well the thing about the sales is they continued at a rapid rate even after release and people had seen the mess with online stuff. Blizzard also have the stats about the number of people actually playing the game, which will help inform them if an expansion would be worth it - the conclusion being yes, obviously.

I'd love to see the AH go too but it's not happening. Maybe if they made it so some of the new drops couldn't be put on the AH and had to be found.

Either way I'm sure the expansion will be a financial success. D3 was the 3rd best selling PC game of all times, beating every other RPG or even action game. Even if only 10% of the people who bought the original buy the expansion the sales will still beat most other games.

Originally Posted by Santos
Yes, the 8K+ trolls. One would think, if there were many countering views, after selling millions of copies, on reputation alone, that some 8K appreciative fans would even out that score a bit.